


Mischief

by Raufnir



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M, a couple of f-words but that's it really, and some kisses, ignis with a wet shirt in the rain was a striking image ok? I had to do something about it, mostly just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 14:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13706808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raufnir/pseuds/Raufnir
Summary: So here’s 2000 or so words of Brotherhood Gladnis for you, involving a training session and rain storm and a fair amount of sassy fluff…Written for the incomparably lovely and talented @hanatsuki89 over on Tumblr, because you’re sweet and you liked this concept. Everyone else, go check out her incredible artwork. Seriously, do it.





	Mischief

“Drat,” Ignis hissed as he stepped out of the main doors of the citadel to find clouds hanging so low that they brushed the top of the palace towers. It being the middle of summer, he had left his umbrella at home.

He scuttled across the courtyard towards the barracks as swiftly as his dignity allowed, and prepared for his daily training session with Gladio. Over the past year, this had become a regular fixture in his day, and he would find himself looking forward to it from the moment lunch was over. The early evening light was muted with the weather, but even that couldn’t stop him smiling as he walked into the airy training room and saw Gladio doing his usual rep of push-ups.

When the door swung open and he saw who had walked through, Gladio began to add a clap to the crest of each push-up, springing off the floor like he could have gone on all day.

“No need to show off already,” Ignis quipped with a wry smile. It had always been this way between them. Harmless banter, quick-fire remarks, eyes meeting in quiet understanding. Nothing more.

Gladio laughed, but he didn’t stop until he’d reached whatever number he’d had fixed in his mind.

With a grunt, he finally finished and stood up slowly, stretching out those massive arms and shoulders, inky tattoos shifting like shadows on his skin. He was gleaming with sweat, and Ignis already felt lightheaded. He had to swallow and look away, pretending to fuss with the cap of the water bottle in his hand.

“What’s on the cards today then?” he asked, raising his head again once he’d wrestled his emotions under control again. Like a team of spooked horses, they barely remained in check.

“Up to you,” Gladio shrugged, coming to a halt in front of him. Ignis could smell the sweat on him; not the sharp and unpleasant stench of unwashed skin, but rather the rich, natural spice of his body and lingering cologne. It was intoxicating.

Gladio folded his arms across his chest, as though to emphasise the colossal curves of his biceps. He’d filled out even more this year than Ignis had thought possible, even for someone with Gladio’s genes.

Still, if this latest and long-overdue growth spurt was anything to go by, Ignis was now catching him up, not before time. His skin had miraculously started clearing up as well, lending him a confidence he’d been robbed of all his younger teenage years. “Lance,” he said. “It’s been a while. I’m beginning to favour my daggers, and I would hate to get out of practice.”

Gladio snorted something about practising with shafted weapons that Ignis pretended not to catch, and then barked, “Alright. Let’s warm up first.”

They jogged the length of the room, loosening up, then picked up the pace, and then, because Gladio remained an overgrown child even at nineteen, played tag. Gladio surprised Ignis on their last sprint of the hall by darting close and tapping him on the shoulder and chirping, “You’re it!” before sprinting away and hiding behind a column.

They ducked and dived and laughed until Ignis couldn’t breathe or run or even hold himself upright anymore. Bending over and resting his palms on his thighs, Ignis swatted a hand at Gladio. “You win. Gods, you are so immature sometimes.”

Gladio came close, laughing, and bumped him with his hip as he passed, making Ignis stagger wildly.

“I rest my case,” Ignis snorted, catching himself before he fell and straightening. “Alright, now that I can’t breathe properly, do you feel we might get started?”

Gladio fished a lance from the racks on the side of the room and tossed it at him. Ignis caught the training weapon with ease and hefted the weight of it, judging the balance of the unfamiliar lance. Each one in the rack had a different weight, a different swing. This one was bottom-heavy. Good, he could use the butt as an additional weapon to the dulled blade.

“Ready?”

“Ready,” Gladio confirmed, swinging his own massive practice sword and settling into a stance as steady as a mountain.

They sparred like they did every day: no holds barred. Literally. The only rule was no intent to injure.

The adrenaline rush that fighting Gladio gave him was like nothing else. What might have been minutes or hours later, Ignis sailed backwards in a perfect handspring to avoid a huge sweeping blow from the greatsword, and he caught Gladio’s laughter.

“Sometimes I swear you can warp as well as Princess, you know?” Gladio’s chest was heaving but he showed no sign of tiring.

Ignis feinted right, dodged left, dodged again and landed behind him in a series of impossibly fast steps. He held his lance’s point at the nape of Gladio’s neck, right at the top of his spine. “How do you know I can’t warp?” he said as the lance tip touched his skin. Some of the danger was robbed from his tone by the fact that he too was almost painfully out of breath, his cheeks pink and flushed from the effort of keeping Gladio at lance-length.

Gladio, instead of yielding, spun and knocked the lance from Ignis’ hands with a massive swing of his sword, but Ignis dived after the lance even as it fell, landed on his hands to pick it up, and bounced straight back up again, ending up in a fighting stance that wasn’t half decent, exhaustion and evident distractions considered.

“Fuck me, Iggy,” Gladio laughed, simply standing still and watching him. “You and Nyx are the best to work out with, seriously. And Cor, but he’s mean.”

“And I’m not?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

“No,” Gladio said. He was breathing hard still, sweat rolling down to add to the darkening ‘V’ at his chest. “You’re just you.” He ran his fingers through his hair that was now caught somewhere between long and short, and leaned his other hand on the pommel of his sword. “Ugh, Astrals, I’m beat. You wanna call it a day?”

“I’d like to stretch, but yes,” Ignis said cautiously, feeling Gladio’s eyes on him as he moved towards the weapon racks to return the lance to its proper place. He wiped it down with one of the anti-bacterial wipes on the wall, and stowed it securely.

Gladio watched him with level, golden eyes all the while he moved, like a coeurl stalking a deer in the meadow.

“Help me stretch?” Ignis asked, folding forwards into a pike, wrapping his fingers around his ankles and pulling his forehead tight to his knees.

Three pounding heartbeats of silence swung between them before Gladio replied with a hoarse, “Sure.”

Ignis, face hidden against his legs, finally permitted himself a smile.

Gladio’s palms were hot through the sweat-dampened fabric of Ignis’ shirt. Whether it was the lingering adrenaline or something else entirely, Ignis wasn’t sure, but whatever the reason, he allowed himself the luxury of two short moans as Gladio accentuated the force of the stretches.

The first one made Gladio’s breath hitch slightly, and the second caused him to increase the pressure he was exerting on the small of Ignis’ back to a blissful ache that bordered on painful but stopped just shy of it.

Being an empiricist, Ignis dared let out just one more.

Gladio’s breath fanned across the nape of his neck and then the weight was gone, the presence was gone, and Gladio had turned away. “Gonna go shower,” he said. His voice had a dull quality to it. The portcullis was down. Ignis had pushed it too far.

Cursing himself, he stood as well and shook his muscles out. “Don’t get stiff, Gladiolus,” he said. “You worked harder than I did today…”

“Too late for that,” Gladio muttered as he snatched up his back. “Thanks, though,” he added from the doorway.

The door swung shut with a bang that reverberated through Ignis’ ribcage and the room alike.

Gladio was in the shower when Ignis entered the locker rooms, the door of his stall firmly shut, but as Ignis stepped into the stream of his own shower next door, he thought he heard a soft grunt followed by a cessation in the irregular splashing as Gladio went still.

Gladio left the shower a minute or two later, and soon the clatter of a metal locker door announced that he was changing. Ignis, who was through the shower more quickly than his best friend had been, stepped out in nothing but a towel, and crossed to his own locker without a word. Gladio’s impressive tattoo was almost complete, with only the lower section of the great bird’s tail to finish, but Ignis kept his eyes forward, focused on his locker and not his best friend.

He could _feel_ eyes on him though, but when he turned, having slipped expertly into his boxer-briefs without removing the towel from his hips, he saw that Gladio was facing the other way. On closer inspection though, were the tips of Gladio’s ears red?

A kind of bravery then began to make itself known to Ignis, like a spring flower pushing its way to the surface, and as he did up the cuffs of his shirt, he caught the hammer of rain on the roof. In a decision that might leave him shivering later, he left his jacket in his semi-waterproof gym-bag, thinking it would at least protect the expensive fabric from the downpour, and turned to face Gladio.

“You headin’ out?” Gladio asked as he caught Ignis’ eye. He had a dark blue Crownsguard tracksuit on, and somehow despite its loose fit, it managed to hide nothing at all of his impressive musculature beneath.

“Yes,” Ignis said, shouldering the bag.

They matched each other pace for pace as they left the barracks, but as Gladio held the door open for Ignis to step out first, Ignis saw that the rain had already almost stopped. He sighed.

“Driving’ home?” Gladio asked as he followed him out into the spitting drizzle.

Ignis shook his head. “No, it was so beautiful that I walked from home this morning.”

“Ah, ’course, it’s Saturday. No school for Princess.”

“Exactly.”

“You mind if I walk a ways with you?” Gladio asked, looking sheepish and a little shy. It was a stark contrast to the way he’d stormed out of the training room. “Your place is on the way to mine… kinda.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Ignis smiled, eyeing a looming dark cloud as it sailed over the citadel.

They made their way across the enormous courtyard, but as they headed through the gates and out through the city in the direction they both lived, the air temperature dropped, and the heavens opened once more.

They were soaked to the skin in seconds, scuttling for shelter under the awning of a flower shop on the main street leading up to the citadel complex.

Laughing, his smart shirt sticking to every contour of his hard, lean chest, Ignis shook his flat hair out of his eyes and took off his rain-spattered glasses. Behind the drumming of the rain on the canvas above, he heard the older man swear.

“Fuck me,” Gladio hissed.

“Just a little rain, Gladiolus,” he said playfully, smiling.

Gladio was not staring at the rain. He stood, panting, but otherwise motionless, his eyes fixed on Ignis’ torso in the wet shirt.

“Fuck,” Gladio said again, closing his eyes and half turning away.

And in that moment Ignis knew for certain. He knew that all his tentative hopes, all his aching fantasies, might just come true after all. “Gladio,” he said, in a tone of voice that _should_ have made the taller man look around at him.

“Yeah?” he asked without turning around to look at him again, as though he would turn to a pillar of salt and dissolve in the rain if he did.

Ignis gave a half smile, feeling mischief burning like a will-o'-the-wisp in his green eyes. He brought his hands to the sodden fabric of Gladio’s hoody and twisted his fingers in it to get a good grip. Gladio’s amber eyes watched him then, widening the closer he got, pupils waxing until they almost eclipsed the ring of gold around their circumference.

When he was close enough that he could count the pores on Gladio’s recently-scarred cheek, Ignis pressed his cold lips into Gladio’s and kissed him.

For easily four seconds – long enough for Ignis to begin to doubt his actions – Gladio remained motionless beneath him. Then, like thunder cracking overhead, Gladio moved. He swept Ignis back against the building behind him, crushing his answer into Ignis’ lips with a fire that even Ignis could not have anticipated. He grabbed a handful of Ignis’ hair and groaned, his shoulders rearing up and his hips pressing close. When he broke their kiss, he gasped, “Gods, Ignis, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that…”

Smiling, unable to tear his gaze away from the heat in Gladio’s face, Ignis shook his head slowly. “I think I can make a fair guess, Gladio.”

Gladio’s eyes rolled and he began to laugh before kissing Ignis again and again, over and over, while the rain hammered down around them.

 

_***_

 

 _Fun fact, will-o'-the-wisp is also known as ‘_[ _ignis fatuus’_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp)!


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